advanced reading copy of ADOPTING GRACE
48 of 186

When I first began to awaken to the underside of the China adoption program, I felt physically ill and had to wrestle with and slowly let the realities seep into my mind, heart, and soul. The truth is that I don’t have satisfactory answers nor can I spin out a story to my daughters that denies the very real human suffering that is an integral part of each and every adoption story. It is a tale that includes individual blindness, collective greed, and the entanglement of two very different cultures. One place that I often turn to for perspective is the voices of adult adoptees. Liz Latty shares these powerful words: “. . . I began to dream in earnest about what it would be like for adoptees to exist in a world that understands the paradoxical experiences that we live. A world that does not insist on reducing us to cheerful assumptions and sentimental media representations. A world that accepts adoption not as an unquestionable, benevolent good, not as a fairy tale ending, but as an event that forever changes and complicates the lives of everyone involved. That when the gavel crashes into the sounding block, literally or symbolically, it is both a fracturing and a coming together, a severing and a multiplication, a derailment and a hope for the uncertain path ahead.”8 Latty’s words point toward the truth that grace and redemption are most often woven throughout adoption. But the cost of true redemption is scorned when the foundational pain and loss of each and every adoptee and birth parent are ignored. Adoption narratives that tell only the joyful side of the ADOPTING GRACE ADVANCED READING COPY 48